Real Romantic Chemistry Makes Man & Witch Almost Worth Watching
When the marketing for a movie relies almost entirely on stunt casting, I expect the movie won’t be very good. And for the first third of Man & Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps, I was not disappointed. Or I was. Disappointed in the movie but not my expectations? The cliche is unclear it seems.
Anyway, the stunt casting here is that this is just the second movie that Tami Stronach has acted in since debuting in The NeverEnding Story as the Childlike Empress back in 1984. She is the Witch of the title. The Man of the title (technically only credited as “Goatherd”) is also the writer, Greg Steinbruner, who also is married to Stronach.
It seems as though Steinbruner was going for something like Ella Enchanted — a story about someone trying to find true love while dealing with a troublesome curse — with attempts at the same level of anachronistic and often meta humor. Sadly, it is a pale shadow of that very enjoyable Anne Hathaway romp. This, despite the surprisingly stacked cast that includes Christopher Lloyd, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Michael Emerson, Daniel Portman (Podrick from Game of Thrones) and the voice work of Sean Astin, Eddie Izzard and Jennifer Saunders.
Steinbruner has written a few works, such as stage plays, but never a feature film, and it shows when he is trying to pull off a fantasy comedy in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. A budget isn’t the only thing Man & Witch lacks in comparison.
In fact, it was so boring and unfunny that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it past the first 15 minutes of the 94-minute movie. But I stuck it out, because that’s about when we meet Stronach as the Witch, and wow, what a world of difference in committing to a role as compared to literally anyone else, including the really big names in the cast. Add to that the very palpable chemistry between the otherwise wooden Steinbruner and his real-life wife, and suddenly the movie had something good to watch.
It flounders in the terrible comedy zone for another 15 minutes or so, before all that gets pushed aside for the story of the budding relationship between the Goatherd and the Witch, through a series of almost impossible tasks she sets for him in order to lift his curse.
Still, as engaging as they are, the movie remains glacially slow in pacing. Montages outstay their welcome, tension-building story beats go on way too long — I understand they couldn’t cut it below 90 minutes and still get a feature release, but man it needs a good 10-15 minutes slashed by a good editor.
All in all, I was surprised at how engaging the movie was when it stayed focused on the story of the Goatherd and the Witch, and we got to see the charming chemistry between Stronach and Steinbruner. But boy, will you have to sit through a bunch of “high school film club” level moviemaking to get to it.
I give Man & Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps (Paper Canoe Studio [owned by Steinbruner and Stronach]; PG; 1 hr 34 mins) a 2.5 out of 5, almost entirely for Stronach. I guess the marketing campaign was smart after all.
